<p>It is a fact that humanities major presents no disadvantage at all in getting you into a med schools if you take some med school reqs.</p>
<p>And, humanity majors usually give you easier grade than premed or engineering.</p>
<p>Then, isn't the humanity major best option if you really want to get into top medical school?</p>
<p>......do what you like!</p>
<p>Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you assuming that pre-med is a major?</p>
<p>no, I meant biochem or that kind of science-oriented prep... sorry for the confusion^^</p>
<p>Because some people actually like science and think of college as an intellectual endeavor rather than a stepping stone to grad school.</p>
<p>
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And, humanity majors usually give you easier grade than premed or engineering.</p>
<p>Then, isn't the humanity major best option if you really want to get into top medical school?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think the conclusion really follows from the premise. High humanities grades won't help you much if your grades in premed courses are terrible. </p>
<p>Furthermore, a major reason why many premeds are science majors is because it is more straightforward for them to complete their premed requirements that way. Most of those premed requirements are courses * that they would have to do anyway * as part of a science major. Hence, you can kill two birds with one stone. Contrast that with a humanities major where premed courses would be above and beyond what you would need to do for your major.</p>
<p>True, sakky, about the above and beyond...</p>
<p>However, (and I'm sure this is highly contingent on school - thus extremely variable) most humanities majors require much fewer hours in total than science majors do. I only needed 30 hours of sociology for the major. Sciences tend to have a lot more prereqs. There's still a lot of overlap within the science major, but humanities majors usually have a lot more available credit hours to play with...</p>
<p>BRM - this is not true at my school. Most majors require about 50 credit hours (we're on the quarter system), with some exceptions like International Studies and Animal Sciences. Still, sciences do not in general require less, even in prereqs. My Spanish major requires five courses before you can even get in to the Spanish department's program.</p>
<p>So, just to play Devil's Advocate, that fact is not true at every school. Look into how your school differentiates between the B.A. and B.S.</p>
<p>I have heard from a med student at my school that students with humanities backgrounds are sometimes less prepared for the hardcore biology and physiology because they only took the med school prereqs and few upper-division biology classes. So, if one were considering a BA, it may be wise to take as many upper-division bio classes as can fit around the major.</p>
<p>It does not matter what major or what type of degree (B.S. or B.A.) you are going for. Just make sure to keep your BCMP average up and your normal average up. It hurts for some Chem/Bio majors, but an English major has the same chance. There is only one exception and that is an Engineering major, their overall gpa is usually lower compared to other majors because they take more difficult courses.</p>
<p>Thing is, with a Science major you are more likely to take more science classes than any other major and you will be more prepared when it comes to the MCAT.</p>
<p>on a side note, today's new york times article on the "very rich are leaving the merely rich behind" was rather interesting and seems like a legitimate reason to go pre-med (in answer to the title of this thread).</p>
<p>...? So that you can join the ranks of the merely rich? Or the highly-indebted-as-your-currently-high-salary-falls-after-you've-spent-13-years-training-for-it?</p>
<p>And PX: It turns out that major does not predict MCAT score very well.</p>
<p>I do believe that there is literature that has been posted on this board, I have no idea which thread, that has shown that humanities majors don't do as well during the first two years of medical school (on average, obviously there are exceptions) as their science major counterparts, but that they tend to better during the clinical years...</p>
<p>I don't recall if they looked at USMLE scores, which has a high correlation to MCAT VR scores...</p>
<p>Courses majors like biochem overlap the med school prereqs. so if you take humanities, you gotta take both your humanities courses, plus the med school prereqs.. and that's more work, ya?</p>
<p>well, regardless of the size of the load of major + prereqs, most schools have a minimum number of credits that need to be obtained before one can graduate anyway, well in excess of the number of credits required to compete a major, so the whole idea of it being more work because the requirements are outside of your major seems rather silly to me. Science classes are almost categorically more difficult and more time-consuming than humanities classes, and are oftentimes graded on curves even at higher levels, so it seems pretty obvious that doing a science major is the more difficult route to take.</p>